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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Mexico goes back to the land
  • Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:26:20 -0700



"(their hope) is no longer hanging on the market or the state. They put
their hope and trust in their increasing capacity to define what they want to
eat, and to produce it themselves. That is our hope."


Mexico goes back to the land
A steady dismantling of support for peasant farmers left Mexico importing
half its grain supply. Now they are fighting back
Monday 14 February 2011 15.00 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/14/mexico-back-to-the-land-peasant-farmers

This is grim news: food prices are reaching record levels worldwide. The
thousands of farmers who have killed themselves over the past decade seem to
have no precedent. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's
director, the goal to reduce the number of hungry people by half will only be
achieved in 2050.

In Mexico, this is just another facet of the crisis that started in the 80s,
when the government dismantled its support for peasant farmers. "My
obligation as minister of agriculture is to get rid of 10 million peasants,"
declared Carlos Hank in 1991. "What are you going to do with them?" a
journalist asked. "That is not my area of work", he answered.

But no one assumed that responsibility. Vicente Fox, former president of
Coca-Cola and president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, used to say "those
peasants can be gardeners in Texas". For him and other policymakers, Mexico
had too many peasants; America, their model, was producing food for the world
with only 2.5% of the labour force. In 1992 they opened to the private market
the land which had been in the hands of peasants since the 1910 revolution.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into force in 1994,
consolidated this anti-peasant orientation in the name of free market.

Those policies drastically reduced food production, and Mexico now imports
more than half of the grains it needs. Many Mexicans were forced to emigrate,
and a fifth of Mexicans now live in the US.

In 1974, the US minister of agriculture Earl Butz coined the expression "food
power" – food pragmatically used as a political weapon. Hunger became one of
the most profitable businesses of the century: immense subsidies transformed
north America and Europe into food suppliers for countries previously
exporting food, whose productive capacities were progressively dismantled.
Today, OECD countries allocate $365bn a year to that purpose, a number now
enlarged with ethanol subsidies: 120m tons of cereals feed cars, instead of
people or animals, with no net reduction of emissions.

Many Mexican peasants resisted the dominant policies and began to build their
own alternative. Without official support, they increased both farmed areas
and yields. Migrants invested part of their income in cultivation. Those
initiatives are complemented by urban agriculture, following the Cuban
example: Havana currently produces more than half of the food it consumes.

The proportion of peasants in Mexico may have been falling (from 75% in 1945
to less than a third today), but their total number is higher than ever, with
ranks continually swelled by urbanites escaping from unsustainable and
violent cities who use modern technologies to create a new lifestyle in the
countryside. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that after 50
years in Mexico City, I now live in a small Zapotec village in southern
Mexico where I produce more than half of what I eat, while learning convivial
practices from my neighbours and plugging my computer into the internet.)

A trend is settling. Just take a look at Vía Campesina, the biggest peasant
organisation in history which started in Latin America in the years of
"structural adjustment". It soon became global and now boasts millions of
members. Today, it is one of the main actors in the world food scene,
opposing transnational corporations and affirming its food sovereignty
paradigm and its new peasant internationalism. Novelist Eduardo Galeano said
that in these times of global fear, some people are afraid of hunger and
others afraid of eating, aware of the contaminated junk served in their
plates. Vía Campesina pressures all governments and attends all the pertinent
international forums. But the hope for its members is no longer hanging on
the market or the state. They put their hope and trust in their increasing
capacity to define what they want to eat, and to produce it themselves. That
is our hope.






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